Meta (Book 3): Rise of The Circle (10 page)

I
f I thought
that the center was out of the way from the rest of campus, the place I'm heading to makes it seem like it's the center of the universe. I'm currently trudging through an undeveloped, heavily wooded part of campus that I actually needed Winston to show me on a map in order to find.

The reason this particular area is so far out of the way is that it was originally intended to be part of the meta training facilities, except it never got even close to finished. The underground tunnel was dug and cleared out, but nothing was ever built on top of it. Since it would look really suspicious for students to be walking out into the middle of the woods everyday and seemingly disappearing, the decision was made to abandon this part of the facility. There's talk of one day linking it to the rest of the training grounds, but for right now, there's really no need for it. There aren't enough metas here to fill even half the current training areas as it is.

As I continue my way through the woods, I check my phone again to see what time it is. It's already close to eleven, and I'm hoping that the rest are still actually here. Sure, ten isn't
that
late, but the hours here are brutal. Classes start at 7:00 a.m. and go until 3:00 p.m. Then from three until seven every day, we're expected to train. After that, we can eat dinner and spend our free time however we want, as long as we remain on campus.

Apparently I'll get used to the schedule, but I was dead on my feet by the time dinner rolled around tonight, and I wound up sleeping right through it. Tonight's gathering would have started hours ago, so considering everyone else has to get up early too, part of me expects to not find anybody. I'm kicking myself for sleeping through dinner and not tagging along with everyone else up here. Out of every school I've been to throughout my childhood up until now, this is the one that I'm the most desperate to fit into, because if I can't fit in with a bunch of other metas my age, I don't even know what else to try.

Finally, after what seems like an eternity of searching, I find it. I'd be lying if I said that the idea that this was all some kind of initiation prank hadn't run through my head a few times, but here it is. Since there's no building to disguise the entrance to the underground facility here, the powers that be decided to use the next best disguise they could think of: a gigantic boulder.

Keep in mind, of course, that the people who made this facility in the first place didn't count on the building above it never being built. But when it wasn't, they didn't want to just flood the tunnel with cement or collapse it with a controlled explosion, just in case they later changed their minds and decided the tunnel would be useful for something. After all, building massive underground tunnels isn't exactly easy, or cheap, even if you're using a meta labor to dig them. You still need engineers to make sure that the structure itself is viable, otherwise you'll find yourself trying to rescue people stranded a mile underground one day.

The nice thing about using a boulder to cover up the entrance is that it's really pretty easy for a metahuman with enhanced strength to get in, though. According to Winston, none of the faculty knows that any of the students know this place exists. Actually, according to him, most of the faculty doesn’t even know it exists. The only way the students stumbled upon it in the first place was through echolocation. One of the metas here apparently
heard
this place from miles away and could tell there was something hollow far underground where it shouldn't be.

Winston warned me that if I was late I'd have to pick up the boulder by myself, which really wouldn't be an issue unless I didn't happen to have enhanced strength, but lucky for me, I do. I bring my hands out and flick my wrists to make my metabands appear back on my wrists before tapping them together to activate. I consciously decide not to activate my uniform since I don't want to be the guy that shows up to a party wearing his work clothes unless I'm sure everyone else is doing it.

I push my shoulder into the boulder and dig my feet into the damp earth underneath me. The boulder moves with little effort and rolls slowly over to one side, exposing a shaft plummeting straight down into the earth. It's so long that the end of it is represented by just a pinhole of light. There's a ladder, thankfully, for those who can't fly or just those who are invulnerable but don't feel like taking a mile-long free fall. On the underside of the rock, I can also see a simple, crude metal handle mounted to the rock itself. I take it that this is there to pull the rock over yourself when you descend down the ladder, which takes care of my question about how I'm supposed to get the rock back in place once I'm inside.

For a moment, I wonder again if I've already missed the party with my stupidly timed nap, but when I focus I can hear the faint sound of music wafting up from the tunnel below. It sounds like people are still here, so I swing my legs into the shaft and grab onto the boulder's handle to pull it back into place on my way down.

Geronimo.

"
H
ey
, Connor! You actually made it," Winston says as I approach.

I'm walking down a monstrously huge cavern toward a group of maybe about a dozen people. They’re quite a ways away from the entrance but easy enough to find since there's really only one way to walk once you get down here.

Winston wasn't kidding when he said they never finished the facility down here. Aside from the ladder and the fact that the tunnel itself looks to be almost perfectly circular, you wouldn't know that it was manmade. Everything is exposed and dark. The ceiling is at least fifty feet above me. The ceiling, walls and floor beneath are all just exposed rock and dirt.

The group I'm heading toward looks like they only have a few items with them. From what I can see there's just a few folding chairs and a Bluetooth speaker playing music. They’re lit from what looks like a fireball hovering overhead in midair. I guess there's no need to bring a flashlight when you've got enough metas around. Get more than a few together and odds are one of them will have some kind of power that will take care of it.

As I get closer, Winston walks over to meet me halfway and claps me on the back, handing me a cup.

"So glad you could join us. We were starting to get worried that you got lost or accidentally got yourself pinned underneath that boulder up there," he says.

"No, I figured it out eventually," I reply.

"Great. Let's get you introduced to some people here," Winston says as we approach the group.

Heads start turning toward me, and I begin to feel incredibly self-conscious all of a sudden.

"Everybody, this is Connor. Connor, this is everybody," he says.

The crowd responds by saying, "Hi, Connor!" in unison, making me feel like I'm at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting before I reply back sheepishly, "Hi, everybody."

They then turn their backs again and go back to their own conversations.

"You're not going to introduce me?" I ask Winston quietly.

"I did introduce you," he says.

"But you didn't tell me any of their names."

"That's all on you, big guy. Say hi to people. Make small talk. No one's going to bite. Oh, except for Steve. That's one of his powers," Winston says.

"Really?" I ask.

"No, not really. Loosen up a bit, dude. We might be a little different, but we've all got one very big thing in common that most people don't have," Winston says, holding up both of his wrists to show me his metabands.

I smile and nod to him, silently agreeing to follow his lead and try to be as little of a social weirdo as I possibly can.

"Hey, you're from Bay View City, right?" a girl closest to me asks, apropos of nothing.

I guess that's just how conversations start? I realize that I recognize her and spend half a second trying to remember where from, before it comes to me that I saw her at the training facility yesterday. Duh. She was the one literally running laps around everyone at the track.

"Uh, yeah, I am," I say before the silence between us gets any more awkward than it already is.

"Did you leave once the Alphas kicked out all of the metas too?" she asks.

"Yeah, but not because of that," I say.

"Why then?"

"Well, yeah, I mean technically because of that, but I wasn't running away. Just had to regroup, you know. Think things through for a bit. Michelle suggested it'd be a good idea to come here."

"So what kind of powers do you have?" she asks. It feels strange to be having a conversation like this out in the open. I've never spoken with anyone in a group setting like this about my abilities when I've been out of uniform. There are a dozen other kids here, all metas, and this passes for just normal, friendly chit-chat, I guess? I'm definitely going to have to get used to this.

"Um, let me think. Strength, flying, speed, invulnerability, vision stuff," I say.

"What kind of vision stuff?"

"Just ... like ... enhanced vision, I guess? I can see through a lot of different materials, like an x-ray almost."

"That's a lot of abilities. If you could teleport you'd have all the big ones locked down."

"I can teleport. Or at least, I used to be able to teleport."

"What do you mean, 'used to be able to'? How did you lose one power but still hang on to the others?" she asks.

"It's my metabands. They were damaged. Ever since I just haven't been able to do it."

"Your metabands were damaged? They're literally the strongest things known to man. How could they have gotten damaged?"

I hadn't noticed up until now, but there seems to be a decent-sized group eavesdropping on our conversation. With the revelation that my metabands are damaged, they are a little less shy with pretending that they haven't been listening. One by one, individuals have started turning their full attention to this conversation, inching closer so they can hear. No one seems concerned with pretending anymore. I wouldn't be either if I had just overheard someone saying that their metabands had been damaged.

"They were damaged in a fight ... with the Alphas," I finally say.

"Holy crap. You're Omni," a voice from the crowd says.

I nod.

"Weren't you the first to find one of the second wave metabands?" Susan asks.

"Yeah, supposedly," I reply. Suddenly I'm starting to feel even more self-conscious than I was before.

"Are we supposed to be impressed by you or something?" another guy from the crowd asks. He's taller than I am, with jet black hair and a vintage-looking t-shirt.

"What? No. I didn't mean to make it sound like-" I start.

"You think you're better than us or something?" the same guy says to me.

Somehow I've managed to almost start a fight just by answering what I thought were some simple small-talk questions. Now I remember why I hate small talk.

"Look, I don't think I'm better than anybody, and I'm not trying to impress you or anything. Susan was curious about who I was, and I told her. That's all. I'm not trying to cause any trouble," I say.

This seems to work for the time being, and individuals go back to their previous conversations, and the crowd around me thins out. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot a small cooler filled with drinks and excuse myself in an effort to go grab one.

Okay, so going over and grabbing a soda will take approximately twenty seconds or so if I include the time it takes to open it. Now I've just got to figure out what I'm going to do to fill the time after that.

Everyone else seems to be deep in their own conversations, and I feel like the odd man out. I hear laughing a little bit farther down the cavern and decide that following it is probably a good way to occupy myself. Better than standing around like the only weirdo without anyone to talk to at a party, at least. And besides, when has following the sound of laughter down a dark, mile-long underground cave ever gotten anyone into trouble, right?

On the edges of the light, I find a small group of six all laughing hysterically at the one in the middle. The one in the middle is frantically trying to find something, which is making all the others just laugh even harder. I start to feel concerned, but then I can see that the one in the middle is laughing a little bit too, even if his eyes are watering.

Finally, one of the members of the group relents. He puts his hand out into the air with his palm facing skyward. Tiny flecks of blue and white begin swirling in the air, forming a tiny tornado in his hand. The specks begin to stick to each other and multiply. Within a few seconds, he's holding a perfectly spherical ball of ice.

I don't think it's even fully formed before the kid in the middle lunges for it and shoves it into his mouth. His face is completely enveloped in steam as soon as the ball of ice hits his tongue. I'm still confused about what's happening, but everyone else is laughing even harder now and a look of relief passes over the kid's face.

"How long was that?" he asks once he seems to have caught his breath.

"Thirty-eight seconds," someone from the crowd tells him.

"All right, not bad, not bad," another says as everyone starts to mockingly applaud.

"Hey, what are you guys doing?" I ask the guy who just created the ice ball, showing the full extent of my party-mingling social skills.

"Do you want to try? Are you invulnerable?" a girl standing next to him asks me.

"Pretty much. But what am I agreeing to try?" I ask.

"You know the cinnamon challenge?" the ice maker asks me.

"Yeah. When you try to swallow a full tablespoon of cinnamon without coughing it out? Is that what you guys are doing?" I ask.

"The idea's the same, but we don't use cinnamon," he tells me.

"So what do you use then?" I ask.

Without saying a word, the girl next to him picks up a nearby rock the size of an acorn. She holds it out in her hand and concentrates. As she does, the pupils of her eyes begin to glow red as though they were lit from behind by fire. A second later the rock in her outstretched hand is glowing bright red.

She's using her abilities to heat it up to the point where it's almost lava.

"What do you say?" the ice ball maker begins. "Think you can keep one of my sister's fireballs on your tongue for longer than thirty-eight seconds?"

"Oh, I don't really think-" I begin before I'm interrupted.

"I knew it. This guy isn't invulnerable," Ice Guy says.

"I'm invulnerable. It's just that invulnerable or not, I don't really like the idea of putting something like that in my mouth."

"Aw, come on, new guy. It doesn't really hurt that badly. It's just a little bit of fun," the fire starter says. "We barely get anytime to ourselves, and when we do, there's not a whole hell of a lot to do around here. We've got to find some way to blow off a little steam."

"Is that supposed to be a pun?" I ask.

"It wasn't, but it was pretty good. I'll have to remember that one," she says as she puts her hand out toward me and begins to heat up another rock. It's nice to see that even at a fancy private school and with superpowers, kids still find new and inventive ways to peer pressure each other into doing stupid things that nobody really wants to do.

"Fine," I say, relenting to it. I haven't made many strides in the whole friend-making thing since I got here, so I'd better start somewhere, even if it is with putting molten rock into my mouth. I stick my hand out to grab the rock, hoping that maybe I can cheat a little bit and grab it before it's at its hottest.

Right before my fingers touch the rock, I can see her expression start to change, but it's too late. My pinky finger grazes the palm of her hand right as she tries to pull it away and out of my reach. Her mouth has already started to form the word “don't” when I feel it.

The pain. It's unbelievable. The heat is so intense that it actually feels like cold at first. For an instant, it feels like my pinky finger is going to fall off, and in that instant, I really, really wish it would if that means this pain would stop. Before the full pain has even hit, I've retracted my hand back into my chest, covering it with the other hand, and collapsed onto the floor into the fetal position. After the brief moment of worry has passed, the sound of laughter fills the cavern again, even louder than before.

"You're not supposed to touch it with your hands, dummy," the fire starter whispers into my ear just as I'm getting my feet back under me, working to stand up again. "The rock is hot, but when I'm using my power, my hands are the same temperature as the surface of the sun. Even when you're invulnerable, that's going to sting."

"Note taken," I say, shaking my hand violently in the air like that's actually going to do anything to rid the lingering pain.

"Here," the ice-maker brother says before slapping a big pile of fresh ice into my hand. "This will take a little bit of the sting out. It's supercooled to absolute zero, so it'll keep frozen for while. Just don't leave it on there too long or else you're going to have the opposite problem with frostbite, and trust me, that can be just as bad. My name's Calvin, by the way."

"Connor," I say, using my free hand to awkwardly do a lefty handshake with him.

"Sorry about all of that," he says.

"It's fine. I mean, it was pretty funny," I say, able to crack a hint of a smile now that the impulse to try to rip my own arm off just to stop the pain has faded.

"No, it wasn't funny. It was very,
very
funny," Calvin says.

"When did you get here?" another member of the group whose laughter has subsided to that of a chuckle asks me.

Wait, did this really work? Can you really just make an ass of yourself and people will just become friendlier? Why hasn't anyone told me about this sooner?

"Just this morning, actually," I reply.

"Wow, they're really just throwing you in the deep end, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess so. As you can see I'm still wearing my floaties."

This joke falls so flat on the floor that you would think it was another one of my superpowers.

"Are you new to being a meta?" the fire starter asks.

"No, I've had my bands for a little while now, actually."

"Wait a minute," a different girl says. "You're Omni, aren't you? I heard that they were going to try to recruit you for here."

"They already told you about me? So much for the whole secret identity thing."

"There's no such thing as secret identities here. Everyone's an open book ... within the group that is, at least. It's the only way they say we can stay sane."

"What does that mean?" I ask.

"They call it metahuman dissociative disorder. They say it's what happens when someone with metabands keeps them active too long and decides to just ignore or abandon their normal, pre-meta life. It's supposed to lead to all sorts of delusions of grandeur, lack of empathy, you name it. It's what they think happened to Jones that turned him so crazy, you know, in the end," Calvin says to me.

"Well it's not like talking about having metabands is something most regular people would understand," I say, finally starting to regain feeling in my hand.